Diary Of A Movie Watchin' Madman - Pre'Ween Horror Under The Stars

        Despite having waxed nostalgic about the drive-ins of my youth here before, I hadn't actually been to a drive-in in over twenty-five years.  The handful still open in Virginia are obliged to predominately show family oriented fare to keep the box office open, and I just can't see a Pixar movie as proper drive-in fodder.  Finally, though, the drive-in gods smiled upon me.  The Family Drive-In in Stephens City, Virginia offered up Halloween themed triple features on both their screens last weekend, and Adrienne and I made the hour long drive Saturday night to take in the show.  It was Adrienne's first drive-in experience ever!

The view through the Buick's windshield at The Family Drive-In in Stephens City, Virginia

     We had to haul ass after work to make the 9:00 o'clock feature, but we made it with enough time to spare that we had an opportunity to poke around the grounds before the show.  I'd never seen a drive-in with two screens before, and I was expecting two separate lots.  It turns out that the screens were placed one on either end of the lot.  The concession stand/projection booth stood midway between the two screens with a projector firing in each direction.  Consequently, vehicles in any given row were facing both directions depending upon which show you were attending.  Since both shows had already commenced before we got there, the lot's layout was dark and disorienting at first.  We used our little tour of the grounds to get the lay of the land, and we ultimately found a slightly off-center spot about three or four rows back that was just a short walk from the concession stand.

     Our triple feature had led off with Dracula Untold (2014), which was finishing up when we arrived.  Fortunately, neither Adrienne nor I cared much about seeing that one anyway.  We actually made the trip to see the other two features, Halloween (1978) and Night Of The Living Dead (1968).  While we were waiting for the first feature to finish up we poked around the concession stand.

The Family Drive-In's bustling concession stand

      The concession stand had a great menu, but they were pretty clearly overwhelmed by the crowd for this event.  Adrienne ordered nachos that were cold and icky, and I ordered an Angus cheeseburger that wasn't ready until about fifteen minutes into Halloween.  Luckily for us, the disappointing concessions were saved by the fact that there was a small building adjacent to the main concession stand that was making fresh funnel cakes.  The funnel cakes ruled!

     The drive-in was using digital projectors, but the ground level front of the concession stand had a separate glass fronted room - sadly, not really open to the public - that displayed the old behemoth projectors the drive-in had used previously.  Unfortunately, the area was too dark to get a decent picture.  The Family Drive-In also gave a nod to its past by still having window hanging speakers at each parking space in addition to broadcasting the movies' audio on FM.  We briefly used one of the old drive-in speakers before opting to roll up the windows and use the radio.

     It turns out using the radio was probably a bad call.  Once Halloween was over I tried to start the car during intermission, and I discovered I had a dead battery.  I walked to the concession stand to ask the proprietors if someone could give me a jump, and the request was barely out of my mouth before a young man with jumper cables was sent out to my car with me.  I'm guessing dead car batteries must still be a pretty common occurrence at the drive-in.

The Family Drive-In's roadside marquee

      Of course the main event was the movies themselves, and it was really a treat to see both Halloween and Night Of The Living Dead at a drive-in for the first time.  Being digital, both movies looked great.  Halloween was particularly strong.  Unfortunately, though, Night Of The Living Dead was screened in the wrong aspect ratio.  The 1.37:1 ratio had obviously been stretched to fill the screen, rendering everyone short and fat.  Oh well.  I'm pretty sure I was probably one of the only people in attendance who noticed or cared, and it really didn't detract from the overall experience much.  I was still seeing the quintessential zombie movie projected onto a massive screen under the stars for the first time, which was easily the highlight of the Pre'Ween season for me.

Movies At Dog Farm Remembers . . . The Drive-Ins Of My Misspent Youth

Skyline Drive-In, Waynesboro VA 

     I'm only glad to be older than dirt when I'm a horror fan who's older than dirt.  I've been fortunate enough to experience some great horror mileposts, some "end of an era" type opportunities that some of my younger contemporaries missed out on.  I've been lucky. 

     I'm grateful that my indoctrination into the world of grown-up horror movies coincided almost perfectly with the slasher movie boom of the late 70's and early 80's.  I was afforded the opportunity to see the likes of My Bloody Valentine (1981), Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), and Halloween II (1981) all on the big screen during their original theatrical releases.  These were the salad days of the gratuitous tit shot and the practical special effect.

The Bowman Body - Cobweb Theater

     I'm grateful that I could look forward to seeing some hoary old black and white horror movie hosted by the Bowman Body every Saturday night, first on Shock Theater (The Big 8!) and later on Cobweb Theater broadcast from Charlottesville.  The picture to the right is a screen capture of the Bowman Body reading a fan letter on the air from a much younger and less jaded movie fan.  You can see the clip in its entirety here.  Even as a youngster I was a genre critic.

Ticket booth at the Skyline

     Most of all, though, I'm grateful that I experienced the last hurrah of the drive-in horror movie.  Nothing beats seeing Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) on a gigantic outdoor screen with a cup of french fries in one hand and the badly dubbed soundtrack blaring through a speaker mounted to the window.

     My mother and I would spend each Saturday doing yard work for my Great Aunt Sydney so I could earn some drive-in money for Saturday night.  The theater in question was usually the Skyline Drive-In (Shenandoah's Showplace) in Waynesboro, VA.  There'd always be a line at the ticket booth because Saturday night was usually "carload" night - one admission price for as many people as you could fit in your car.  It  was an entertainment value that couldn't be beat, especially if it happened to be a dusk til dawn show.

     I had the good fortune to see Motel Hell (1980), Fear No Evil (1981), The Gates Of Hell (1980), and The Creeper (1977) on the Skyline's mammoth screen.  I saw The Toolbox Murders (1978), The Driller Killer (1979), and Wolfen (1981), too.  I saw them all out under the stars on humid summer nights, the way God intended.

     At some point I'd always have to visit the bathroom or the snack bar, usually after I was sufficiently spooked by the evening's entertainment to make the trek from the car to the snack bar a terrifying dash through the darkness and open air.  The bathroom, in particular, was the stuff of nightmares, lit by the jaundice glow of the yellow bug lights punctuated occasionally by the purple flash of the bug zapper.  The bathroom had a screen door and a trough to pee in - very utilitarian.

     Inside the snack bar, though, was the drive-in holy grail.  For as long as I visited the Skyline, there was always a poster for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) on the wall beneath a sign that read "Coming Soon".  It was a tease.  TCM never played the Skyline during these years.  I know.  I waited for it.  And waited, and waited . . .

     Undoubtedly, the poster had been there since TCM had played the Skyline years earlier.  I ultimately did see TCM on the big screen years later at a midnight screening - I can be grateful for that, at least - but nothing could've beaten seeing the epitome of the drive-in horror movie at the Skyline.

The Route 340 Drive-In marquee, covered by speedway signs

     I would occasionally find myself at the Route 340 Drive-In, as well - also in Waynesboro - and that was an even sketchier state of affairs.  The Route 340 shared land with Eastside Speedway, so on most Saturdays you couldn't hear the movies until after the drag racing was done for the night.  The Route 340 also generally played raunchier titles. 

     My most vivid memory of the Route 340 was the night my mother and I stumbled upon I Spit On Your Grave (1978) playing there.  Spitting on graves - it's a horror movie, right?  My mother was mortified that she'd taken her nine year old son to see a movie with a protracted and graphic rape scene that comprised nearly a third of the movie's run time.  She couldn't really make me leave the room, either.  I ended up standing by the snack bar for most of the rape, thereby at least sparing my mother the uncomfortable silence and unfathomable shame.  I still can't bring myself to watch I Spit On Your Grave in mixed company.

     There's one final drive-in that deserves an honorable mention here - Roth's Drive-In in Harrisonburg, VA.  We visited the Roth less frequently because it was farther away, but it distinguishes itself as being the venue in which I first saw both Halloween (1978) and Friday The 13th (1980).  A fellow in the bathroom assured me when I saw Friday The 13th that the version he'd seen the preceding week was gorier.  I'm not even going to conjecture as to why he felt the need to share that info with a ten year old standing at the pee trough. 

     This post came about because of an exchange with Jonny Dead at Blood Sucking Geek.  Jonny, who's younger than me (who isn't?), was envious of the fact that I'd seen The Driller Killer at a drive-in.  For those who didn't, I highly recommend  Jonny Dead's Trash Box Volume 1, wherein Jonny pairs The Driller Killer with Naked Massacre (1976) in a lovingly rendered ode to the drive-in / grindhouse experience.  All of the drive-ins mentioned here are long gone, but the drive-in aesthetic lives on.

Movies At Dog Farm Retrospective: Friday The 13th Part II (1981) - Best Of The Friday Franchise?

     The original Friday The 13th (1980) scared the hell out of me when I saw it as an impressionable ten year old at the now long defunct Harrisonburg Drive-In.  It's funny, now, to imagine that I was ever frightened by a Friday, but I had no idea at the time that a movie could be so . . . graphic.  This was the first hard horror movie I'd ever seen, and make-up ace Tom Savini showed me things in great, gory detail that my innocent young mind had never imagined.  The arrow through Kevin Bacon's neck from beneath the bunk haunted me (dammit, I knew something was under my bed), and Jason emerging from the lake at the end (". . . then he's still there. . ." - echo and fade) worked on my brain like the finest campfire tale.

    The next year was a formative one for me.  Despite how terrified I'd been by the murders at Crystal Lake, I began to cajole my mostly obliging parents to take me to every new slasher movie that opened.  That was a lot of movies - this was the height of the early 80's slasher boom, after all.  I'll always be grateful for having discovered contemporary horror at such a pivotal moment in genre history.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the TV ads began running for Friday The 13th Part II (1981).  Oh, happy day!  I never dared dream that the body count would continue.  I'd toughened up in the interceding year, and I was ready to revisit the horror that started it all.  I conned my mother into taking me to the theater on opening weekend.  Lights go down, opening titles blow up, Henry Manfredini's iconic score kicks in, and we're off!

     Friday The 13th Part II always seemed to me to be the scariest of the franchise.  Undoubtedly, the peculiar mix of excitement and dread I carried into the theater with me gave it some added juice, but still . . .  To this day, I expect to find a severed head every time I open the fridge.  It always spooked me that Jason ventured out of the woods to track down and kill the only survivor of Part I, as well.  Think what we now know of Jason.  Premeditation has never really been his strong suit.  Then he takes the boiling tea pot off the burner after killing Alice?  These are the actions of a more deliberate and thoughtful slasher than we came to know later.  Jason had a very specific axe to grind in Part II, and his calculating nature made him a more formidable and frightening threat.  Hell, he'd even run after his victims if the circumstance dictated it. 
                                                                
     I know I'm in the minority on this point, but I always preferred Jason's The Town That Dreaded Sundown look to the now iconic hockey mask, as well.  This looked like the pick-axe toting hillbilly I wouldn't want to meet in the woods at night.  You just know something awful is going on under that potato sack - who wears a sack over his head otherwise? 

      Best of all, though, Jason begins to give us a clear indication of  his own moral imperatives.  He wouldn't kill a guy in a wheelchair, right?  Mark's machete-in-the-face backward wheelchair ride down a lot of stairs, never tipping over until the chilling freeze frame and fade to white, proves otherwise.     

       Jason's first two-for-one kill of copulating teens - trimmed to avoid an X rating, and very reminiscent of a murder set piece in Mario Bava's Twitch Of The Death Nerve (1971) - also betrays a very puritanical upbringing.  Seriously, imagine what kind of mother Mrs. Vorhees would have been.  The indication of some kind of inner life for Jason that drives his murderous impulses is way scarier than the hockey masked comic book character that came later.  As slapdash as much of Part II is, it gets a lot right.  Jenny's contemplation in the local bar of Jason's psychological state as dictated by the traumas he's endured humanizes him just enough to make him that much scarier.  Now we know he has an agenda.  
                                                                       
      . . . and speaking of things Part II gets right:  Jenny is easily the very best of the Friday Final Girls.  She's likable, smart, engaging, and entirely capable of handling her own pitchfork.  I remember being very disappointed that Jenny didn't at least make a pre-credit appearance in Part 3.  Then I remember watching the rest of Part 3 and realizing that was only the tip of the disappointment iceberg.  So was Friday The 13th Part II the best of the Friday franchise?  Well, The Final Chapter competes, but I believe Part II takes the prize.  Please discuss.